


Prisoners

by last_system_lord



Series: Enemy Amongst Us [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Post-Continuum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3599229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/last_system_lord/pseuds/last_system_lord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is captured by a Trust splinter group.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prisoners

‘No, I will _not_ fix it,’ said Sam, considerably less politely than would normally have been considered a good idea in her situation.

Simon – as he had introduced himself- seemed to be high up in a splinter group from the Trust. Sam had been able to glean snatches of information since she’d been rudely dragged in and it seemed that this particular group had split from the Trust before, or perhaps because of, the Goa’uld infiltration.

Simon’s face darkened into a scowl at Sam’s reply. ‘You will fix this, and others, or you are no use to us.’

Sam studied the large box-like machine and wondered where it had come from. It looked like a disturbing mash up of several different technologies. In another situation, she might have played along a bit, pretended to study it, but there wasn’t much point.

With her subcutaneous transmitter and the Odyssey due back that afternoon, Sam figured she’d be out by the end of the day.

_________________________

A full day with no food and very little water was enough for Sam. Clearly something had gone wrong and the Odyssey hadn’t arrived back on time and they couldn’t locate her transmitter yet, so she needed to give them more time.

That meant plan B; take a look at the machine, figure out what it did and make it look like she was doing something useful.

The machine was a mess. Sam was pretty sure it had once been data storage with a holographic interface, but someone had opened it up and _altered_ it. At first, Sam had had trouble figuring it out but once she’d suspected it, she could see the tampering at every turn. At least figuring that much out had meant she was working on the machine, which was keeping Simon happy.

But Sam was wary to continue.

She _could_ mess around with it herself, take some readings and pretend she was setting it up for them, but the once benign machine was now a potential death trap.

Sam had even noticed particularly discreet changes in circuits that should have been totally harmless and she suspected that whoever had altered it either had no idea what they were doing and had made changes at random…

…or knew exactly what they were doing and each change was connected to a specific purpose.

Until she knew the motives of the last person who’d been messing with it, Sam really didn’t want to touch the device.

‘Hey!’ Sam called through the door, ignoring the guards. ‘Hey!’

The guards motioned her away from the door and Simon came striding in, followed closely behind by a new guy.

‘Is it functional?’ Simon asked, not bothering to introduce the new guy.

Sam shook her head. ‘No and I won’t be able to figure it out properly, until I speak to the last person who worked on it.’

It wasn’t even a lie, and it handed her a convenient excuse to have not made any real progress. It didn’t seem to have thrilled Simon though.

‘Don’t lie to me. We know your record and you _can_ figure the machine out yourself.’

‘Okay, fine,’ said Sam, it wouldn’t hurt to postpone things a little, give her team some more time. ‘But I really need to know if you’ve had anyone who’s actually familiar with the machine near it, or just someone like me, trying to understand it.’

‘You’re asking if the last person knew what he was doing,’ paraphrased New Guy flatly.

Sam nodded and watched as the two of them exchanged a glance. Interesting.

‘You can assume he did,’ said Simon succinctly and left the room.

‘You have the rest of the day to come up with something,’ New Guy said. ‘You will have food sent to you in an hour.’

Food, it seemed, only came depending on whether or not they thought she was being cooperative.

Alone again with the machine, Sam studied it thoughtfully. So, someone had made a serious effort to significantly alter the function of the device, and fairly subtly too; she still wasn’t certain she’d found all the changes.

Vaguely Sam wondered what had happened to the that ‘someone’, had the Trust – she had yet to hear a name for the splinter group so was thinking of them as the Trust- removed them from work when they realised their captive had been making changes to the device? More than likely.

In which case they were probably dead.

Sam sat back on her heels and frowned. The few pieces of diagnostic equipment she was allowed to use weren’t giving her anything useful, but the data did suggest that the power had been significantly diverted from its original purpose.

And that was bad. Very, very bad.

Whatever civilisation had built the device as a data terminal had still been struggling with holographic technology and had failed to streamline the power consumption, meaning that, for a simple data terminal, it had a hell of a lot of power.

Sam was almost certain it was booby trapped to blow.

The big question then became; was it on a timer? Sam didn’t think so, but really didn’t want to check it out thoroughly. The more she looked at it, the more she was certain that it was rigged so that any small change could blow them to kingdom come. Really, she was lucky she hadn’t set it off when she’d hooked up the diagnostic machines.

‘Huh.’ Sam considered a new angle.

So, if she messed with it, it would go off… but if she could find out how powerful it was likely to be…

Examining the readout in front of her, Sam considered the possibility of setting her own timer.

_________________________

By the type New Guy came back in with her lunch, Sam was sure she _would_ be able to rig a timer, but couldn’t figure out how powerful the resulting explosion would be. She needed to speak to whoever had modified it in the first place – if they weren’t already dead – and was fairly certain she could manipulate New Guy into letting her.

‘Thanks,’ said Sam graciously, as he handed her a curled, obviously stale, sandwich. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’

‘Adrian,’ the man grunted. Sam was sure they were only giving her false names, but hey, she had to call them something. ‘What does the device do?' 

Sam pulled a face. ‘I don’t know.’ 

Adrian’s expression darkened, so Sam ploughed on quickly.

‘I could figure it out, but not with the changes the last person made,’ she lied. ‘I _think_ it’s been rigged to explode and I can’t figure out what it was supposed to do until I can undo those changes, which I can’t do that without speaking to the person who changed it.’

‘Undo the changes by yourself,’ snapped Adrian, looking remarkably unsurprised that someone had turned his precious machine into a bomb.

‘I can’t,’ Sam told him. ‘Not without setting it off.’

Adrian opened his mouth to reply, but the door opened before he could get the chance. Simon strode in and Sam got the impression he’d been listening at the door.

‘So she wants to speak to the person who modified it?’ he asked Adrian, looking at Sam with a nasty glint in his eye. ‘That could be arranged.’

‘I don’t think…’ Adrian trailed off, looking doubtful.

‘ _I_ think you should go and get our other prisoner. Maybe he’ll be persuaded to help Colonel Carter fix the device,’ said Simon, Adrian nodded, not looking any more convinced, and left the room.

Sam, without taking her eye of Simon, tucked into her sandwich. It tasted about as good as it looked.

‘So,’ said Sam, mostly to see how talkative Simon was. ‘I guess you had to stop this other prisoner from working on the machine when you realised he was changing it.’

‘And we had other uses for him,’ Simon told her, being, Sam suspected, deliberately cryptic.

Giving up on getting any more information out of Simon, Sam sat down and considered her options. Obviously, there was something stopping the Odyssey from detecting her subcutaneous transmitter; otherwise she would have already been rescued.

Therefore she was going to have to make her own way out. Not a big deal if the machine made a large enough bang to destroy some of the compound, without taking her with it of course. With any luck, she’d have help with that. Their second prisoner clearly knew his way around the device and Sam was fairly confident with the two of them working on it they would be able to hatch an effective escape plan.

Then she could return to the SGC and get the rest of the Trust splinter group captured and that would be that. All in a good days work.

Her plan was immediately derailed as Adrian returned with someone Sam had been quite certain she would never see again.

Ba’al entered the room casually, his gaze sweeping over the room in obvious distain, before finally settling on her. ‘Samantha Carter, what a surprise.’

In hindsight, Sam realised she’d been able to feel the low level buzz that indicated someone else with naquadah in their blood was nearby. Damn it, she should have picked that up earlier!

Adrian shoved Ba’al in the back, propelling him towards Sam as Simon moved back towards the door. ‘Work with her, fix what you’ve done, or we may decide you are no longer useful.'

The door slammed behind them. 

‘And I actually thought we’d caught the last clone,’ commented Sam bitterly.

‘Surely you can give me more credit than that,’ said Ba’al. ‘I _did_ notice you were tracking us down.’

Sam sighed and then gestured to the problem at hand, mainly the data-terminal-turned-bomb. ‘How long did they let you work on that?’

Ba’al smirked. ‘Long enough. I would have expected even the Tau’ri to know better, but apparently not.’

Really, there was a dozen things Sam wanted to know, but she doesn’t know how much time they have before Simon comes back in. So; priorities.

‘What’s the surveillance like in here?’ She’d already seen a camera.

‘There’s no audio.’ Ba’al sniffed and Sam could hear the unsaid _amateurs_ as clearly as if he’d shouted it.

‘Good.’ Sam gestured at the device. ‘I want to detonate that, but I _really_ don’t want to take us out with it. I was thinking a timed controlled explosion as a distraction, so we can make a run for it as they take as back to the cells for the night.’

Ba’al laughed. ‘Once that goes off, it will take the building with it.’

Of course it would. Sam rolled her eyes. ‘You think big, don’t you?’

‘Always,’ Ba’al agreed. ‘I tried to convince them that it was worth working _with_ me. Clearly they would rather be incinerated.’

‘Great, there goes plan A.’ Sam thought about the problem, turning it over in her mind so she could examine it from all angles. ‘If you show me what you’ve done to it, I think we could fix it so I can broadcast a signal to the SGC.’

‘No.’

‘It would get us out of here-’

‘If you attempt to contact your SGC,’ Ba’al interrupted coldly. ‘I will detonate the device.’

Sam stared at him, not certain she’d heard correctly. ‘You’d blow us both up?’

‘It would be _significantly_ less humiliating than Tok’ra extraction.’

‘I’m sure we could work something out.’ It was surprisingly hard to lie through her teeth, particularly considering it was _Ba’al_ she was talking to.

‘If that was a possibility, you would have done so last time. You did, after all, think he was the last of us.’ Ba’al folded his arms.

Sam winced and looked away.

Ba’al walked slowly around the machine, saying nothing.

‘Okay.’ Sam huffed out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. I’m guessing you did have an idea to get yourself out before some idiot managed to detonate this?’

‘Yes.’ Ba’al smiled slightly. ‘Unfortunately it involved a device that they have since confiscated.’

A device that he obviously wasn’t going to tell her about, so Sam only said; ‘Confiscated when they realised you’d turned this one into a bomb.’

‘They do not know it’s a bomb,’ Ba’al said. ‘They suspect it, of course, but they are not intelligent enough to know for sure.’

Frankly Sam was still struggling with the concept that these people would make it clear they were refusing to work with Ba’al and _still_ give him access to unknown alien technology. Maybe they were only a splinter group to the Trust because the Trust kicked them out. Sam knew she never would have kept someone that stupid.

And speaking of stupid... 

‘And then what? Why didn’t they kill you?’ After finding him messing with their precious alien devices, it just didn’t make sense. 

‘They are also interested in my healing abilities,’ Ba’al admitted.

Sam turned around, because that sounded like… and yes, sure enough, under closer inspection Ba’al looked tired. Sam felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy.

‘Wow,’ she managed to say, and had to search for something that would remind her, as much as him, that they were still enemies. ‘At least extraction would have been quick.’

His expression hardened as Sam immediately regretted her words. Mocking someone for being tortured was not usually her style.

She was actually getting ready to apologise about it when Ba’al said; ‘Perhaps I should remind them about _your_ Tok’ra experience, they might find it a beneficial extension of their experiments.’

Ignoring the little voce at the back of her mind that said she had deserved that, Sam scowled at him. ‘So you don’t actually have an idea to get us out of here…?’

He evidently didn’t, but Sam thought she just might. She had noticed that the building had a pretty good fire suppressant system. It was simply water, she could see the sprinklers, but it looked like they were well placed so that the water would have maximum coverage.

Maybe setting off sprinklers wasn’t the most sophisticated idea she’d ever had, but then simple plans were usually the most effective.

‘What if,’ said Ba’al, when she explained the idea to him, ‘they have disabled it?’

‘I doubt it.’ Sam chewed her lip. It was possible of course, but… ‘I don’t see why they would.’

The look Ba’al gave her made it very clear he knew she was grasping at straws.

Sam sighed. ‘Well we can _try_ it. Unless you want to wait until my team find us…?’

‘I am sure you can find something to set on fire.’ Ba’al knelt down next to the machine and started swapping around connections.

‘Hey!’ Sam hurried over to fend him off. ‘Leave that alone. Why do I have to be the one starting the fire? They already know you’re not co-operative, so if something goes wrong we don’t want them to be suspicious of me.’

‘Ah, but you will have more opportunities.’ Ba’al brushed her aside and continued what he was doing with the machine. ‘This won’t be the only device they show to you. By tomorrow I imagine you will have plenty of ways to start a fire.’

The door burst open with enough force so that it crashed into the wall.

‘Step _away_ from the device!’ yelled Adrian, flanked by two guards, all pointing guns straight at Ba’al.

Amazingly, Ba’al did as he was told. ‘You asked me to fix it.’

Adrian gestured at Sam with his gun. ‘She is the only one allowed to touch that. You show her what you did, she fixes it.’

‘It would go much quicker if I fixed it myself.’ Ba’al’s smile was not reassuring.

‘Take him back to his cell,’ Adrian ordered the guards, not lowering his gun.

The two guards moved forward and Ba’al rolled his eyes at Sam, but went with them anyway.

She moved straight back towards the device, certain Ba’al had done something to it, but Adrian intercepted her.

‘You can’t finish your work on this until he is co-operative. Come with me.’

There were two more guards outside and they closed ranks behind her as Sam followed Adrian, albeit reluctantly. She was sure she was being taken to more alien technology – as Ba’al had predicted – but she really wasn’t comfortable leaving the other device until she knew what Ba’al had been doing.

Whatever reason this group had for splitting from the Trust, it hadn’t been a superior stash of alien technology – at least not what they were showing her; there was only two pieces of technology in the new room they’d taken her to. Which was good news, seeing as Ba’al clearly intended to blow the place up.

Sam had the urge to try and run back to the other device to make sure it wasn’t going to spontaneously explode. But no. She had to keep telling herself that Ba’al _was_ still locked up and wouldn’t blow himself up.

First thing she noticed was that they had a ribbon device, but it was broken. Fat lot of good that was going to be.

However the second piece of technology looked like an Ancient medical scanner, Sam would love to know how they’d got hold of that. But then the Trust had always had friends in high places. It took her less than a minute to establish that the medical scanner was also broken.

Since she was still trying to stay on their good side – no need to pull a Jack O’Neill and incite them – Sam decided to just go with the truth.

‘They’re broken.’

‘I brought you here to fix them.’ Adrian sounded annoyed and Sam suspected Ba’al had unnerved him. He’d seemed pretty calm before, although not so much as Simon. Sam had decided she needed to watch Simon.

‘Right,’ said Sam, knowing she didn’t sound at all apologetic. Pretending to co-operate had its limits after all… and on that note; she pointed at the ribbon device. ‘I’m not fixing that.’

‘Then fix the other one.’ Adrian parked himself near the door.

Frowning, Sam watched him warily out of the corner of her eye, until she realised that there was a good chance none of them could use the ribbon device anyway. Unless they had teamed up with a Goa’uld who just wasn’t currently around… but their treatment of Ba’al said otherwise.

A broken Ancient medical device was not the best tool for starting a fire. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers and Sam had plenty of experience working with less than ideal resources.

Not to mention that it could be remarkably easy to start a fire _without_ intending to.

By the time the day was over (where the _hell_ was her team?), Sam had successfully isolated the main power source and done enough work that Adrian was convinced she was co-operating. Had he actually bothered to do some research on SG-1, Sam suspected he would have been way more suspicious.

Clearly although these people were pretty organised in military strength – they _had_ captured both her and Ba’al – they didn’t have a lot of experience on holding prisoners.

_______________________

They put her straight back in with the medical device the next day, but this time Adrian didn’t stay to supervise.

That suited Sam just fine. She positioned herself in the room so that the cameras didn’t quite have a clear view of the medical device and removed the power source. Unlike Ba’al, Sam didn’t need the thing to explode, which was just as well. The medical device had far better failsafes build in to it than the data device he had altered.

The crystal based technology also made causing a spark in a simple scanner difficult, which was why Sam had stolen some wire from the ribbon device.

A few sparks and a wooden table… not really enough to start a good fire, so Sam had requested some acetone. Officially to clean the crystals in the medical scanner. Unofficially…

Well. Acetone was a good accelerant.

The request had raised a lot of suspicion and Simon had come in to examine the crystals, telling her his own men would clean them. Sam had barely got by with the argument that she needed to clean them as she went, and putting acetone on the wrong section could destroy them.

He bought the lie, and Sam got her acetone. Some of which was now soaking into the leg of the table.

Adrian entered the room and Sam jumped slightly, hoping he didn’t notice the new wire coils in the scanner. ‘Move.’

‘Where?’ asked Sam, hurriedly switching on the scanner, which let out a small spark. Not enough! The damaged power source was taking its time warming up.

‘Just move.’

Sam dropped the scanner by the acetone soaked table leg and crossed her fingers. Adrian led her back to Ba’al’s modified machine, and Sam stopped short of it. The device was letting out a low, rattling hum.

Simon stood nearby, glowering. ‘Turn it off.’

Yeah. Sam had got that, but if she had to make a bet, she’d have said that device was going to explode, regardless of what she did. Preferably _after_ she’d got clear.

That explained why Ba’al had suggested she light the fire today; he’d been setting the bomb to go off. Hardly a surprise, but it did lend a certain urgency to the situation. Sam looked hopefully up at the sprinkler system. Nothing.

‘I don’t know what Ba’al did to it,’ Sam admitted. ‘I’ll need his help to cut the power.’

_And tell him that the plan isn’t going so well_ , she thought.

The devices activity had them worried enough that they didn’t waste time arguing with her and before she knew it, Ba’al was being shoved back into the room.

He was sporting a large bruise on the right side of his face and one sleeve was soaked in blood. Sam looked away.

‘If that is going to explode, you’re going with it,’ said Simon firmly and Sam had a horrible feeling that was true. ‘Now deactivate it.’

Ba’al limped over to the device, examining it carefully. ‘Oh it’s not actually doing anything, the noise is perfectly harmless. I hope you didn’t worry yourselves.’

If Sam had seen a less reassuring smile in her life, she couldn’t remember it.

‘Deactivate it, or die,’ said Simon, obviously no more convinced than Sam.

‘Where,’ Ba’al hissed in her ear as he passed her, ‘is that fire?’

‘I’m sure we’ll be able to deactivate it,’ said Sam, giving a slight shake of her head to Ba’al.

If looks could kill, Sam wouldn’t have had to worry about the bomb anymore.

Ba’al reached in to the device and, just like that, the sound stopped. Way too easy, in Sam’s experience.

Simon looked between her and Ba’al and then at the diagnostic machines that was still hooked up to it. It was an Earth machine, but Sam had hooked it up herself, and done it accurately, and it was still showing activity in the device.

‘Kill the Goa’uld,’ said Simon and one of the guards raised his gun.

‘Wait!’ Sam shouted, before she remembered that Ba’al was her enemy too. All eyes in the room turned to look at her, showing a mixture of reactions, but it was the startled surprise in Ba’al’s deep brown eyes that stopped Sam from immediately contradicting herself.

Sam stared back at him, trying to think of something to say; trying to figure out what she _wanted_ to say, when an alarm blared and the room disappeared in a haze of water.

Years of training meant that Sam acted without thinking and almost before she knew it she had knocked down one of the guards and was through the door. Ideally, she would have taken his gun, but she didn’t have time to stop.

The warehouse was a maze and Sam ran through more or less blindly, the sprinkler system hampering her as well as her captors. Bullets echoed somewhere behind her and Sam threw herself around another corner.

Sam nearly laughed.

In front of her was a fire door, programmed to open when the alarm system went off.

Diving through it, Sam blinked in the bright sunshine, wiping the water off her face as she momentarily stopped to get her bearings.

Then she saw him. Ba’al had exited further along the compound and was running towards the nearest car, which was also the nearest car to her, so Sam ran after him.

Ba’al reached it first and Sam found an extra burst of speed, worried she wouldn’t make it before he took off. The engine started just as Sam through herself into the passenger seat. Ba’al, the bruise on his face almost healed, turned in alarm before he saw it was her and actually relaxed. Weird.

‘Drive,’ Sam ordered, expecting to hear the rumble of machine guns any second.

Ba’al stamped on the accelerator and the car’s engine groaned and revved but the car itself stayed stubbornly still.

‘What…?’ Taking his hands off the wheel, Ba’al glanced down at the pedals in bemusement.

Shaking off her vague disbelief in favour of immediate action, Sam reached over and yanked off the handbrake and the car lurched sickeningly forward, the engine’s pained whine only increasing. Sam clocked the gear stick and realised he’d managed to choose what had to be the only manual car in the lot.

‘What are you doing?!’ yelled Sam over the protesting engine. ‘Change gear!’

‘Give me a moment to figure out your primitive transport,’ Ba’al snarled back, seizing the gear stick and attempting to move it.

‘You don’t…’ Sam risked another glance to see if anyone was following their sluggish escape attempt. Not yet. ‘You’ve spent time here before. Tell me you know how to drive. Damn it, you need to put down the _clutch_! It’s the pedal on the left!'

Ba’al hit the clutch and dragged the car up a gear. Or two. Sam winced.

‘I’m a God. I had a chauffeur.’ Ba’al wrestled the car onto the main road and reached for the gear stick again.

Sam was turning around again when her seatbelt dug into her chest and she found herself thrown forward as the car came to an abrupt halt and the engine spluttered and died. A string of Goa’uld curses erupted from Ba’al and he started the engine again.

‘That,’ Sam rasped out, rubbing her shoulder where the belt had dug in, ‘was the _brake._ ’

‘Your input is not helpful.’

The car bunny-hopped to a start and they swerved back into action, grating horribly up into second gear.

‘Stop the car,’ said Sam grimly, as Ba’al missed third gear and nearly stalled them again. ‘I’m driving.’

‘We don’t have the time.’

Somehow he’d managed to force the car into third, but Sam didn’t like the sound the engine was making… or the erratic steering.

‘It’ll _save_ us time. Stop the damn car, Ba’al.’

‘And where will you drive us?’ Ba’al clung to the steering wheel. ‘Straight into that hole where you like to store your Chappa’ai.’

Sam dug her nails into her hand as the outside wheels shuddered off the edge of the road. ‘Where the hell else would I be going?’

‘ _You_ may be heading back there eventually.’ Ba’al turned the wheel sharply and they lurched back onto the road. ‘But _I_ am not signing up to a trip to the Tok’ra.’

‘Puh-lease.’ Sam rolled her eyes, common sense telling her that there was no way Ba’al would let that happen without a fight. He’d made that _very_ clear. ‘Do you really think we’ll let you wander around Earth?’

Ba’al stamped on the accelerator, the engine’s groans bringing Sam’s attention back to the more immediate problem.

‘Fine. I won’t drive us straight to Stargate Command, but how about I take the wheel _before_ they start coming after us or we run into other traffic. Probably literally.’ Sam had noticed they were fast approaching the local industrial area. She risked another nervous glance at the rear view mirror and her stomach dropped as she saw the distance, yet distinctive shape of a large black car hurtling after them. ‘Shit. Too late.’

‘What?’

Instead of also checking in the mirror, Ba’al turned to look behind them and also turned the wheel. The car twisted off the road, skidded sideways, and then hurtled off towards a nearby traffic sign as Ba’al started cursing again.

In an act of desperation, Sam leant over and grabbed the wheel herself, trying to point them back in the general direction of the road and away from the fast approaching sign.

‘Get off!’ Ba’al shoved her back into her own seat as they bounced back on to the road.

Sam watched the black four-wheel drive in the mirror; it was gaining on them. What a surprise. A shadow over the car made her flinch back, before Sam realised they’d passed the first building of the industrial area and dammit she could see cars up ahead.

‘You need to slow down,’ Sam ground out as they passed a warehouse that was open and teeming with forklift trucks.

‘I don’t think so.’

Sam watched a small delivery truck approaching from the other direction with dismay. ‘You’re going to get us both killed!’

‘Feel free to get out,’ snapped Ba’al, accelerating.

‘We’re in the _middle of the road_ ,’ Sam hissed, nails digging into the palms of her hands.

She’d been in several life-threatening situations since joining the SGC, so much so that possible death had become a pretty much daily risk. And yet somehow she’d failed to imagine that she would die as a result of an ex-System Lord’s total failure to drive in a straight line.

They missed the truck, though Sam wasn’t sure quite how they’d managed it. It flashed past them, horn blaring as the driver shouted abuse. She didn’t even have time to breathe a sigh of relief because in addition to a station wagon meandering after the truck, their pursuers were getting dangerously close.

Ba’al swung the wheel hard, and they turned left in a screech of tires, leaving the station wagon driver trying to pull a late evasive manoeuvre. Sam could only stare in horror as Ba’al twisted the car out of the way of more incoming traffic on the side road.

Finally, the road was clear ahead of them, although Sam couldn’t say how long it would last. She couldn’t see the four-wheel drive behind them but no doubt it would be soon. They just had to…

The noise was accompanied by a horrible scrapping sound and the car jerked to the side as Sam cringed away. The engine made a final grinding noise and they spun to another dead stop.

Ba’al was looking at the dashboard like he’d never seen it before. ‘I don’t understand.’

Sam did. She was looking at the remains of the wing mirror on her side. No doubt the paint was also a complete mess.

‘Just get us out of here.’ Sam was aware of the note of desperation in her voice, but she’d just seen the four-wheel drive swing onto the road.

The car reluctantly stumbled back into life and limped down the road.

‘Accelerate!’ Sam hollered, itching to drag his ass out of the driver’s seat and take over. The Trust car loomed ever closer as Ba’al swung a poorly executed right turn.

They weren’t going to be able to outrun it. Maybe if she’d been driving from the start they could have made it, but now? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

‘Bet you’re wishing you’d let me contact Stargate Command,’ said Sam snidely as a gun appeared out of the four-wheel drives passenger window.

‘Hardly,’ Ba’al sneered back, swerving them wildly over the road, although whether on purpose Sam couldn’t say.

Then she heard it. A sweet, sweet noise. Someone, somewhere along the way, possibly even the irate truck driver, had decided they were too much of a hazard to be on the road and done the only decent thing. They’d called the cops.

The siren was fast approaching and Sam _knew_ the Trust operatives couldn’t take the risk of being caught, not with their base so nearby.

‘Tell me that signals one of your fire trucks,’ said Ba’al.

‘I doubt it,’ said Sam cheerfully, her theory confirmed as the Trust car pulled away from them, just in time to duck out of sight of the rapidly police car that spun onto the road about 400 yards behind them.

Ba’al twisted a reached for something behind the seat. ‘I will _not_ be delivered to the Tok’ra.’

Sam leaned away, preparing to fight him, but Ba’al came up holding an umbrella, and narrowly avoided slamming them into a nearby fence.

‘Stop! Pull over and turn your engine off immediately!’ an officer proclaimed through a megaphone somewhere behind them.

Ba’al ignored him, shoving one end of the umbrella down near the foot pedals and undoing his seatbelt so that he could jam the other side against his seat back. Then he opened the door.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Sam and the sinking feeling was back in the pit of her stomach.

Ba’al looked speculatively out the windscreen, disentangled himself from the umbrella... and jumped out of the car.

Sam swung around in her seat in alarm, but there wasn’t enough time to spot Ba’al before she realised that the car wasn’t trundling to a stop despite its absent driver; Ba’al had used the umbrella to wedge down the accelerator. Cursing, Sam leapt back into action, grabbing the wheel with one hand while wrenching the umbrella free with the other, she hooked a leg over to jam down the clutch.

The car skewed to a decidedly ungraceful stop.

‘Get out of the car with your hands up!’ A megaphone blared, painfully close.

Sam sighed, and disentangled herself from the car to face the music.

It quickly became clear that the officers had somehow missed Ba’al’s leap from the car. Although how… Sam supposed he must have got hold of some other technology in the short time they’d been separated. Possibly a Sodan cloak.

‘Listen,’ Sam tried. ‘If you just call-‘

Her voice was drowned out by a roar of a massive explosion before the shock wave caused her to stagger forward into the cop car.

‘What..?’ The cop turned around in shock and the Odyssey chose that moment to beam her up.

________________________

‘So what you’re telling me,’ said General Landry, a little bit tetchily, ‘is that we have no idea if these people were part of a larger group?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ Cam confirmed, not at all put out by Landry’s tone. ‘Since the warehouse was completely destroyed we just don’t have anything to go on.’

Sam shifted uncomfortably in her seat. There had been no useful evidence found after the explosion, which certainly meant that they couldn’t tell how big (or small) the trust splinter group was, however it had further implications for Sam. No evidence at all meant no evidence of Ba’al, which in turn meant it was up to her to bring it up.

And she hadn’t done that yet.

There had seemed a dozen other things to cover and the longer she left it the harder it got. What was she supposed to do? Just stand up and say that, oh yeah, Ba’al was there too? Ba’al was supposed to be _dead_.

Sam was finding the concept of giving someone up purely for execution very hard. Yet it was _Ba’al_ ; who had so many crimes it had taken the Tok’ra hours to list them all, so surely he deserved it. Didn’t he? _Didn’t he?_

‘Okay people,’ Landry was saying. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye out for any more of these splinter groups, and I want you all to be more conscious of your personal security.’

Suddenly, everyone was getting up from the conference table and Sam felt a flash of panic. She had to say something! Ba’al was a security risk of the highest order; he knew all about the SGC and had… exactly zero resources. Huh.

‘Everything okay, Sam?’

Her head snapped up and Sam saw Daniel peering down at her.

‘Yeah.’ Sam scrubbed a hand over her face and made a decision. ‘Yeah, everything’s fine, thanks

_______________________


End file.
